THE SUPREME COURT; Excerpts From the Supreme Court Decision on the Miranda Ruling of 1966

Following are excerpts from the decision in Dickerson v. United States in which the Supreme Court held that the core principles of the 1966 Miranda ruling may not be overruled by Congress. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion; Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissent. The italics appear in the original.

FROM THE DECISION

By Chief Justice Rehnquist

In Miranda v. Arizona, we held that certain warnings must be given before a suspect's statement made during custodial interrogation could be admitted in evidence. In the wake of that decision, Congress enacted [Section] 3501, which in essence laid down a rule that the admissibility of such statements should turn only on whether or not they were voluntarily made. We hold that Miranda, being a constitutional decision of this court, may not be in effect overruled by an act of Congress, and we decline to overrule Miranda ourselves. We therefore hold that Miranda and its progeny in this court govern the admissibility of statements made during custodial interrogation in both state and federal courts.

We begin with a brief historical account of the law governing the admission of confessions. Prior to Miranda, we evaluated the admissibility of a suspect's confession under a voluntariness test. The roots of this test developed in the common law, as the courts of England and then the United States recognized that coerced confessions are inherently untrustworthy. Over time, our cases recognized two constitutional bases for the requirement that a confession be voluntary to be admitted into evidence: the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. For the middle third of the 20th century our cases based the rule against admitting coerced confessions primarily, if not exclusively, on notions of due process. . . . The due process test takes into consideration ''the totality of all the surrounding circumstances both the characteristics of the accused and the details of the interrogation.'' . . .

We have never abandoned this due process jurisprudence, and thus continue to exclude confessions that were obtained involuntarily. But our decisions in Malloy v. Hogan and Miranda changed the focus of much of the inquiry in determining the admissibility of suspects' incriminating statements. In Malloy, we held that the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause is incorporated in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and thus applies to the States. We decided Miranda on the heels of Malloy.

In Miranda, we noted that the advent of modern custodial police interrogation brought with it an increased concern about confessions obtained by coercion. Because custodial police interrogation, by its very nature, isolates and pressures the individual, we stated that ''even without employing brutality, the 'third degree' or [other] specific stratagems, custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty and trades on the weakness of individuals.'' We concluded that the coercion inherent in custodial interrogation blurs the line between voluntary and involuntary statements, and thus heightens the risk that an individual will not be ''accorded his privilege under the Fifth Amendment not to be compelled to incriminate himself.'' Accordingly, we laid down ''concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow.'' Those guidelines established that the admissibility in evidence of any statement given during custodial interrogation of a suspect would depend on whether the police provided the suspect with four warnings. These warnings (which have come to be known colloquially as ''Miranda rights'') are: a suspect ''has the right to remain silent, that anything he says can be used against him in a court of law, that he has the right to the presence of an attorney, and that if he cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed for him prior to any questioning if he so desires.''

Two years after Miranda was decided, Congress enacted 3501. That section provides, in relevant part:

''(a) In any criminal prosecution brought by the United States or by the District of Columbia, a confession shall be admissible in evidence if it is voluntarily given. Before such confession is received in evidence, the trial judge shall, out of the presence of the jury, determine any issue as to voluntariness. If the trial judge determines that the confession was voluntarily made it shall be admitted in evidence and the trial judge shall permit the jury to hear relevant evidence on the issue of voluntariness and shall instruct the jury to give such weight to the confession as the jury feels it deserves under all the circumstances.

''(b) The trial judge in determining the issue of voluntariness shall take into consideration all the circumstances surrounding the giving of the confession, including (1) the time elapsing between arrest and arraignment of the defendant making the confession, if it was made after arrest and before arraignment; (2) whether such defendant knew the nature of the offense with which he was charged or of which he was suspected at the time of making the confession; (3) whether or not such defendant was advised or knew that he was not required to make any statement and that any such statement could be used against him; (4) whether or not such defendant had been advised prior to questioning of his right to the assistance of counsel; and (5) whether or not such defendant was without the assistance of counsel when questioned and when giving such confession.

''The presence or absence of any of the above mentioned factors to be taken into consideration by the judge need not be conclusive on the issue of voluntariness of the confession.''

Given 3501's express designation of voluntariness as the touchstone of admissibility, its omission of any warning requirement and the instruction for trial courts to consider a nonexclusive list of factors relevant to the circumstances of a confession, we agree with the Court of Appeals that Congress intended by its enactment to overrule Miranda. Because of the obvious conflict between our decision in Miranda and 3501, we must address whether Congress has constitutional authority to thus supersede Miranda. If Congress has such authority, 3501's totality-of-the-circumstances approach must prevail over Miranda's requirement of warnings; if not, that section must yield to Miranda's more specific requirements.

The law in this area is clear. This court has supervisory authority over the federal courts, and we may use that authority to prescribe rules of evidence and procedure that are binding in those tribunals. However, the power to judicially create and enforce nonconstitutional rules of procedure and evidence for the federal courts exists only in the absence of a relevant act of Congress. Congress retains the ultimate authority to modify or set aside any judicially created rules of evidence and procedure that are not required by the Constitution. But Congress may not legislatively supersede our decisions interpreting and applying the Constitution. This case therefore turns on whether the Miranda court announced a constitutional rule or merely exercised its supervisory authority to regulate evidence in the absence of Congressional direction. Recognizing this point, the Court of Appeals surveyed Miranda and its progeny to determine the constitutional status of the Miranda decision. Relying on the fact that we have created several exceptions to Miranda's warnings requirement and that we have repeatedly referred to the Miranda warnings as ''prophylactic,'' and ''not themselves rights protected by the Constitution,'' the Court of Appeals concluded that the protections announced in Miranda are not constitutionally required.

We disagree with the Court of Appeals' conclusion, although we concede that there is language in some of our opinions that supports the view taken by that court. But first and foremost of the factors on the other side that Miranda is a constitutional decision is that both Miranda and two of its companion cases applied the rule to proceedings in state courts to wit, Arizona, California and New York. Since that time, we have consistently applied Miranda's rule to prosecutions arising in state courts. . . .

The Miranda opinion itself begins by stating that the court granted certiorari ''to explore some facets of the problems of applying the privilege against self-incrimination to in-custody interrogation, and to give concrete constitutional guidelines for law enforcement agencies and courts to follow.'' In fact, the majority opinion is replete with statements indicating that the majority thought it was announcing a constitutional rule. Indeed, the court's ultimate conclusion was that the unwarned confessions obtained in the four cases before the court in Miranda ''were obtained from the defendant under circumstances that did not meet constitutional standards for protection of the privilege.''

Additional support for our conclusion that Miranda is constitutionally based is found in the Miranda court's invitation for legislative action to protect the constitutional right against coerced self-incrimination. . . .

Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture. While we have overruled our precedents when subsequent cases have undermined their doctrinal underpinnings, we do not believe that this has happened to the Miranda decision. If anything, our subsequent cases have reduced the impact of the Miranda rule on legitimate law enforcement while reaffirming the decision's core ruling that unwarned statements may not be used as evidence in the prosecution's case in chief.

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The disadvantage of the Miranda rule is that statements which may be by no means involuntary, made by a defendant who is aware of his ''rights,'' may nonetheless be excluded and a guilty defendant go free as a result. But experience suggests that the totality-of-the-circumstances test which 3501 seeks to revive is more difficult than Miranda for law enforcement officers to conform to, and for courts to apply in a consistent manner. . . .

We conclude that Miranda announced a constitutional rule that Congress may not supersede legislatively.

FROM THE DISSENT

By Justice Antonin Scalia

Those to whom judicial decisions are an unconnected series of judgments that produce either favored or disfavored results will doubtless greet today's decision as a paragon of moderation, since it declines to overrule Miranda v. Arizona. Those who understand the judicial process will appreciate that today's decision is not a reaffirmation of Miranda, but a radical revision of the most significant element of Miranda (as of all cases): the rationale that gives it a permanent place in our jurisprudence.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) held that an act of Congress will not be enforced by the courts if what it prescribes violates the Constitution of the United States. That was the basis on which Miranda was decided. One will search today's opinion in vain, however, for a statement (surely simple enough to make) that what 3501 prescribes -- the use at trial of a voluntary confession, even when a Miranda warning or its equivalent has failed to be given -- violates the Constitution. The reason the statement does not appear is not only (and perhaps not so much) that it would be absurd, inasmuch as 3501 excludes from trial precisely what the Constitution excludes from trial, viz., compelled confessions; but also that justices whose votes are needed to compose today's majority are on record as believing that a violation of Miranda is not a violation of the Constitution. And so, to justify today's agreed-upon result, the court must adopt a significant new, if not entirely comprehensible, principle of constitutional law. As the court chooses to describe that principle, statutes of Congress can be disregarded, not only when what they prescribe violates the Constitution, but when what they prescribe contradicts a decision of this court that announced a constitutional rule. As I shall discuss in some detail, the only thing that can possibly mean in the context of this case is that this court has the power, not merely to apply the Constitution but to expand it, imposing what it regards as useful prophylactic restrictions upon Congress and the states. That is an immense and frightening antidemocratic power, and it does not exist.

It takes only a small step to bring today's opinion out of the realm of power-judging and into the mainstream of legal reasoning: The court need only go beyond its carefully couched iterations that Miranda is a constitutional decision, that Miranda is constitutionally based, that Miranda has constitutional underpinnings, and come out and say quite clearly: We reaffirm today that custodial interrogation that is not preceded by Miranda warnings or their equivalent violates the Constitution of the United States. It cannot say that, because a majority of the court does not believe it. The court therefore acts in plain violation of the Constitution when it denies effect to this act of Congress. . . .

It was once possible to characterize the so-called Miranda rule as resting (however implausibly) upon the proposition that what the statute here before us permits -- the admission at trial of un-Mirandized confessions -- violates the Constitution. That is the fairest reading of the Miranda case itself. The court began by announcing that the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination applied in the context of extrajudicial custodial interrogation, itself a doubtful proposition. . . .

Miranda was objectionable for innumerable reasons, not least the fact that cases spanning more than 70 years had rejected its core premise that, absent the warnings and an effective waiver of the right to remain silent and of the (thitherto unknown) right to have an attorney present, a statement obtained pursuant to custodial interrogation was necessarily the product of compulsion. Moreover, history and precedent aside, the decision in Miranda, if read as an explication of what the Constitution requires, is preposterous. There is, for example, simply no basis in reason for concluding that a response to the very first question asked, by a suspect who already knows all of the rights described in the Miranda warning, is anything other than a volitional act. And even if one assumes that the elimination of compulsion absolutely requires informing even the most knowledgeable suspect of his right to remain silent, it cannot conceivably require the right to have counsel present. There is a world of difference, which the court recognized under the traditional voluntariness test but ignored in Miranda, between compelling a suspect to incriminate himself and preventing him from foolishly doing so of his own accord. Only the latter (which is not required by the Constitution) could explain the court's inclusion of a right to counsel and the requirement that it, too, be knowingly and intelligently waived. Counsel's presence is not required to tell the suspect that he need not speak; the interrogators can do that. The only good reason for having counsel there is that he can be counted on to advise the suspect that he should not speak.

Preventing foolish (rather than compelled) confessions is likewise the only conceivable basis for the rules that courts must exclude any confession elicited by questioning conducted, without interruption, after the suspect has indicated a desire to stand on his right to remain silent or initiated by police after the suspect has expressed a desire to have counsel present. Nonthreatening attempts to persuade the suspect to reconsider that initial decision are not, without more, enough to render a change of heart the product of anything other than the suspect's free will. Thus, what is most remarkable about the Miranda decision -- and what made it unacceptable as a matter of straightforward constitutional interpretation in the Marbury tradition -- is its palpable hostility toward the act of confession per se, rather than toward what the Constitution abhors, compelled confession. The Constitution is not, unlike the Miranda majority, offended by a criminal's commendable qualm of conscience or fortunate fit of stupidity. For these reasons, and others more than adequately developed in the Miranda dissents and in the subsequent works of the decision's many critics, any conclusion that a violation of the Miranda rules necessarily amounts to a violation of the privilege against compelled self-incrimination can claim no support in history, precedent or common sense, and as a result would at least presumptively be worth reconsidering even at this late date. But that is unnecessary, since the court has (thankfully) long since abandoned the notion that failure to comply with Miranda's rules is itself a violation of the Constitution.

As the court today acknowledges, since Miranda we have explicitly, and repeatedly, interpreted that decision as having announced, not the circumstances in which custodial interrogation runs afoul of the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment, but rather only prophylactic rules that go beyond the right against compelled self-incrimination. Of course the seeds of this prophylactic interpretation of Miranda were present in the decision itself. In subsequent cases, the seeds have sprouted and borne fruit: The court has squarely concluded that it is possible -- indeed not uncommon -- for the police to violate Miranda without also violating the Constitution. . . .

It is simply no longer possible for the court to conclude, even if it wanted to, that a violation of Miranda's rules is a violation of the Constitution. But as I explained at the outset, that is what is required before the court may disregard a law of Congress governing the admissibility of evidence in federal court. The court today insists that the decision in Miranda is a ''constitutional'' one; that it has ''constitutional underpinnings,'' a ''constitutional basis'' and a ''constitutional origin''; that it was ''constitutionally based''; and that it announced a ''constitutional rule.'' It is fine to play these word games; but what makes a decision ''constitutional'' in the only sense relevant here -- in the sense that renders it impervious to supersession by Congressional legislation such as 3501 -- is the determination that the Constitution requires the result that the decision announces and the statute ignores. By disregarding Congressional action that concededly does not violate the Constitution, the court flagrantly offends fundamental principles of separation of powers, and arrogates to itself prerogatives reserved to the representatives of the people.

The court seeks to avoid this conclusion in two ways: First, by misdescribing these post-Miranda cases as mere dicta. The court concedes only that there is language in some of our opinions that supports the view that Miranda's protections are not constitutionally required. . . . The second way the court seeks to avoid the impact of these cases is simply to disclaim responsibility for reasoned decision making. It says: ''These decisions illustrate the principle not that Miranda is not a constitutional rule but that no constitutional rule is immutable. No court laying down a general rule can possibly foresee the various circumstances in which counsel will seek to apply it, and the sort of modifications represented by these cases are as much a normal part of constitutional law as the original decision.''

The issue, however, is not whether court rules are mutable; they assuredly are. It is not whether, in the light of various circumstances, they can be modified; they assuredly can. The issue is whether, as mutated and modified, they must make sense. The requirement that they do so is the only thing that prevents this court from being some sort of nine-headed Caesar, giving thumbs-up or thumbs-down to whatever outcome, case by case, suits or offends its collective fancy. And if confessions procured in violation of Miranda are confessions compelled in violation of the Constitution, the post-Miranda decisions I have discussed do not make sense. The only reasoned basis for their outcome was that a violation of Miranda is not a violation of the Constitution. If, for example, as the court acknowledges was the holding of Elstad, the traditional fruits doctrine developed in Fourth Amendment cases (that the fruits of evidence obtained unconstitutionally must be excluded from trial) does not apply to the fruits of Miranda violations; and if the reason for the difference is not that Miranda violations are not constitutional violations (which is plainly and flatly what Elstad said); then the court must come up with some other explanation for the difference. (That will take quite a bit of doing, by the way, since it is not clear on the face of the Fourth Amendment that evidence obtained in violation of that guarantee must be excluded from trial, whereas it is clear on the face of the Fifth Amendment that unconstitutionally compelled confessions cannot be used.) . . .

Today's judgment converts Miranda from a milestone of judicial overreaching into the very Cheops' Pyramid (or perhaps the Sphinx would be a better analogue) of judicial arrogance. In imposing its court-made code upon the states, the original opinion at least asserted that it was demanded by the Constitution. Today's decision does not pretend that it is and yet still asserts the right to impose it against the will of the people's representatives in Congress.